Early exposure to brain research promotes interest in neuroscience careers. However, of 102 neuroscience research electives available to undergraduates, we found 22 that allow novel projects and only 3 that focus on novel neuroimaging projects. The SNIRP provides undergraduates a mentored process for novel neuroimaging research project development, completion, and publication/presentation. Students develop a research hypothesis, decide how to test it, then perform data collection, analysis, and presentation.

The SNIRP will engage neuroimaging research teams including students, faculty and collaborators to leverage research time, promote academic publications/scholarship, and accelerate grant funding.

FreeSurfer 6.0 was installed on Ubuntu 16.04LTS in the NeuroImaging Research Core (NIRC) lab and on CentOS 7 in a Virtual NIRC environment. Meetings with a research mentor exposed students to methodologic and practical considerations to guide project and protocol development, and obtain IRB approval. The students devised a retrospective analysis of clinical and MRI data; they hypothesized that greater cortical thinning would be found in subjects with traumatic brain injury (TBI) compared to matched controls in inferior frontal, anterior temporal, and parietal lobes. During a full-time 10 week internship, they abstracted clinical data from EPIC, and identified, processed and analyzed 3D post-contrast T1 sagittal MRI data. They delivered a presentation of preliminary results, and are now completing data analysis for publication. 

We report the feasibility of using novel neuroimaging research projects to promote research education for undergraduate students. We were able to identify only 3 other programs that offer such opportunities. The SNIRP contributed to faculty project development, grant applications and publications and will be expanded to further stimulate collaboration and scholarship.

As SNIRP students develop and complete novel neuroimaging research projects, faculty investigators and mentors are motivated to solidify collaborative relationships, build productive multidisciplinary research teams, and pursue NIH grant funding.